You have to wonder whether Manchester United are aware how their stand-off with David de Gea smacks of a club who appear to be suffering from an acute absence of clarity and joined-up thinking.
Do they realise how unprepared they look? Can they understand why, coming so quickly after Manchester City paraded the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup trophies around town, it is tempting to conclude that the modern-day United must have abandoned some of the essentials which, in happier times, afforded them their own such greatness?
Have they simply just forgotten that the most impressive and brilliantly efficient football clubs do not build title-winning teams through indecision and a lack of clearheadedness?
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It is difficult, in the extreme, to imagine that City — the club described as a “juggernaut” by Rio Ferdinand, one of the great defenders of United’s history — would find themselves in a similar position these days.
Without it ever being formally announced, De Gea reached an agreement with United towards the end of last season. He had been earning £375,000 a week on a deal that expires at the end of June, making him the highest-paid goalkeeper in the industry. Something had to give and his new offer was on drastically-reduced terms. De Gea accepted it and, as everyone headed off for the summer break, told his team-mates he would see them again in July.
One problem: the paperwork was never completed at the club’s end and, plainly, something has changed in terms of how much United want to pay him — and also in how long they want to pay him for.
De Gea was subsequently informed that original contract offer was no longer relevant and, in its place, new terms were available that would mean another considerable reduction in salary.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he is not entirely happy.
With the players returning to start pre-season training next week, De Gea still has not decided what to do. As things stand he is going to be out of contract on Friday, officially a free agent.
(Photo: Matthew Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)
All of which feels entirely avoidable for the 20-time English champions amid a summer of protests against the Glazer family who continue to own the club, no transfer business of note yet and the inescapable sense that it is going to be exceptionally difficult to get any closer to City next season after finishing 14 points behind them last month.
Unless De Gea fancies some of the mind-boggling sums on offer in Saudi Arabia, the most likely outcome is that he will accept these newly-revised terms. There are, after all, not many takers for a highly-paid goalkeeper who, at 32 years old, is widely considered to be on the wane.
At the same time, he is entitled to think he has been messed around, and that it is no way to treat a man who has been at Old Trafford for 12 years and, other than Cristiano Ronaldo, stands alone as a four-time winner of their player of the year award.
Yes, De Gea is not going to end up on Skid Row with the millions that could still be funnelled into his bank account under the new contract. And, yes, his suitability for manager Erik ten Hag’s team is a legitimate talking point, bearing in mind his often excellent goalkeeping has been undermined too often by occasions when he has seemed vulnerable and accident-prone.
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His critics could argue with justification that De Gea has been overpaid and, for that, more fool Ed Woodward, United’s former executive vice-chairman, for sanctioning the contract that runs out at the end of this week. All the same, what has happened with De Gea this summer is not how a big club should operate. It is not the kind of story you would hear about at post-takeover City and, for the player himself, the message it sends is not particularly encouraging.
What United are saying is essentially this: we want to keep you, we just don’t want to keep you that much…
It would have been cleaner, in one sense, if they had just let him go.
De Gea’s suitability for a Ten Hag team has been questioned (Photo: Matthew Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)
Many people would assume it must have something to do with the FA Cup final three weeks ago and De Gea’s inability to keep out Ilkay Gundogan’s two volleyed goals for City when, at the highest level, a goalkeeper might have been expected to do better on both occasions.
De Gea won the most recent of his 45 international caps in October 2020. Few people eulogise about him, as they once did, as a contender to be recognised as the Premier League’s best goalkeeper, even though he won its Golden Glove award as the goalkeeper with the most clean sheets last season.
It is quite plausible that performance against treble-bound City at Wembley was a decisive factor behind United’s volte-face over his contract, one among a series of matches where Ten Hag has been asked whether he fully trusted the Spaniard. But the more startling point is why United would propose a deal that, within a few weeks of it being accepted, was removed from the table. What does that say about the planning, or lack of it, from Old Trafford’s decision-makers?
If minds were changed by the FA Cup final, at least that is some form of explanation. If that is the case, however, it is just difficult to understand why the club have not been more decisive. Nobody seems capable of making the kind of hardline decision that once saw Alex Ferguson drop his regular No 1, Jim Leighton, from his starting XI for the 1990 FA Cup final’s replay against Crystal Palace.
Dean Henderson, who spent last season on loan at Nottingham Forest, is still coming back from a January thigh injury (and closer analysis would reveal there are flaws — in particular with his kicking — in his desire to be considered a category-A goalkeeper anyway).
Tom Heaton, 37 years old and off the back of only three first-team starts this decade, may have to start the first pre-season fixture against Leeds United on July 12 and, with everything up in the air, United have had to make contingency plans, including contacting the representatives of Andre Onana, Inter Milan’s goalkeeper.
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None of this reflects well on the chief executive, Richard Arnold, or the football director, John Murtough, both of whom seem to be learning on the job having been appointed to those positions in the past couple of years.
Both of them have had a long time to prepare for De Gea’s contract winding down and consult Ten Hag about what needs to be done about it. That process is still underway.
And, ultimately, it leaves United in the eccentric position of planning for a looming pre-season without knowing the identity of their No 1 or whether the club’s goalkeeper of the past 12 years, for good and bad, will even be turning up.
(Top photo: Matthew Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)
